SOURCE: “Fiction and the Furniture of Consciousness,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. C, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp. 323-30.

In the following excerpt, Davenport praises Hoffman's skill as a novelist and offers a positive assessment of Furors Die.

“Caelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt”: those who rush across the sea change their climate, not their minds. Thus ran Horace’s advice to his travelling friend Bullatius. Given the right sort of mind, you will find what you seek anywhere, even at squalid Ulubrae—or, given the wrong sort, nowhere. Horace’s line has enjoyed a modicum of fame, no doubt because there have always been enough impenetrably ethnocentric travellers to make it seem true. But there are other conclusions that might be drawn here as well. For, if it is the mind that makes the place, then the mind—the right sort, once again—can presumably find (or create...